


Water Table

by Siriex, vitriol



Category: Fate/stay night & Related Fandoms, Fate/strange fake
Genre: Alternate Universe - Id:Invaded, Gen, Quite a few of Waver's students make cameos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:40:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23938555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siriex/pseuds/Siriex, https://archiveofourown.org/users/vitriol/pseuds/vitriol
Summary: Brilliant Detective Flat is on the case!(An Id:Invaded AU.)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	Water Table

**Author's Note:**

> Please watch Id:Invaded

He opened his eyes. 

The world was huge, dark, and fractured. Streets snapped off one way to another, and the crumbs dangled in between. Billboards, planters, and buildings alike drifted through the air as if embedded in gelatin. He looked down. His feet were solid on the ground, though he could not say what made him any distinct from the other things in the city.

Curiosity burned bright in his chest. He did not know where he was or even who he was, but those things hardly seemed important. More than anything, he wanted to know more about this place. It fueled his feet down the street. 

The splintered cityscape gave him hardly half a block to work with. He tottered on the edge of the asphalt and looked down. There were no other pieces of the city down there. The background was pure black. 

“Doesn’t look like there’s a sun in this world either,” he thought aloud as he looked up. “But the pieces are all roughly at the same altitude. Can you call it altitude when there’s no solid ground?” He laughed and turned back to head in the other direction. The street lamps provided a convenient source of light, but they were often suspended far above the ground, and he could see far too well for their efforts alone. More likely every piece was emitting a small amount of light on its own. 

Maybe he could learn something about this place and himself if he asked the locals. Unfortunately, he did not see anyone on any of the pieces in sight. 

“Guess I’m just gonna have to explore on my own!” 

There was a shop connected to the same street he currently occupied. He tried the door and found it locked. “Huh. That’s weird. I wonder who locked it. Did everyone leave when the city fell apart? It must’ve happened pretty slowly if they had time to lock the doors.” He took further stock of the building. If people had left gradually, there was probably some kind of clue hidden inside. There was an alley off to the side and, when he peered down it, there was a half-cracked window just above a dumpster. “Bingo!” 

The alley was subject to the same strange lighting as the street. He hiked his leg up over the lid of the dumpster and pushed. The fabric of his pants slipped against the rough plastic and he went tumbling back down. “Ow… Guess I’m not really made for this kinda thing. Whoever I am, I guess I’m not good at athletic stuff.” He could try to climb again, but twisting his ankle now would really get in the way, and the last thing he wanted was anything slowing him down. Maybe someone had left something that he could use as a stool. He looked to the other side of the dumpster and- 

There was someone there. 

“Oh! I’m sorry! I didn’t see,” the half-hearted apology caught in his throat. He did not know her, and he could not see her face under the veil of her hair, but he knew her name. It was Saki, and she was propped up against the wall. If it weren’t for the cavity in her stomach he might have mistaken her for sleeping. As it was, her intestines were looped over her thighs, and an unidentifiable mass of flesh that was  _ definitely  _ one of her organs was cradled among them. 

“You’re Saki.” It felt like an incantation on his tongue. It was the only thing he was certain of in this world for a brief moment, but it brought two more facts along with it. “And my name is Flat. I… don’t think I’ve got a last name, but I’m a brilliant detective. Which means,” Adventure lit his eyes. “I promise that I’m gonna solve your murder!” 

Saki did not acknowledge his promise, but he grasped her hand and shook it anyway. 

“And step one is examining the body! Sorry, Saki!” 

His first action was to brush her hair back with gentle care. There was nothing there. His fingertips did not brush against a nose or a cheekbone, but instead against a smooth expanse of skin. 

Saki did not have a face. 

Flat raised his eyebrows, mouth open in soft surprise. He looked back to the street and considered the world around him. “Is your face out there somewhere? … No, probably not, right? Because everything else that’s broken has jagged edges. It’s kinda like you never  _ had _ a face in the first place. Maybe that’s why they killed you? People don’t like people that’re different.” He turned his attention to the wound in her stomach. It was probably done with a knife. The cuts were clean and precise, like surgery, and the way her guts were cradled in her lap looked orchestrated.

Whoever’d done this had done it with care, and taken the weapon with them when they left. There probably was not much more to find here. Flat got to his feet and brushed the dust from his knees. “Sorry, Saki. I’ve gotta go. But I’ll come back once I know a bit more, okay?” 

The scene was wide open, but only so big. This chunk of street was only half a block square at most. The killer was probably still in the vicinity. If that was the case, then the open window in the alley was all the more suspicious. He made a second attempt at climbing the dumpster and managed it, but not without scraping his shin. He ignored the sting and hooked his hands under the window to push the frame up further. It was heavy, and it took almost all of his strength to get it wide enough to slip through. He had to squeeze through, scraping skin against aching bone. 

It was a three foot drop to the floor, but he had plenty of time to brace his arms for impact. 

The window led to the basement of a department store. He looked around to catch his bearings. He’d entered in the kitchen section, though it was a strange one. There was nothing but utensils as far as the eye could see- hundreds of thousands of sets of kitchen knives stuffed into blocks. “Maybe,” he wondered aloud, “The killer  _ got _ the weapon from here, and then went outside to kill Saki?” That seemed more plausible. Windows typically latched from the inside, not the outside. If the entire building was locked like the front door had been, then someone would have had to open the window from the inside. 

If he could find the block with the missing knife, it might give him a better idea of who he was dealing with. 

Flat was out of reach of the window’s breeze when a smell caught his attention. It was not the stench of the dumpster, freshly abandoned, or the scent of blood or rot; it was the scent of rotten eggs. He pinched his nose shut. “Did someone try cooking in here? But there’s no stove or anything. I dunno why someone’d do that.” But the edge was a little too sharp for eggs. It burnt up his nose past his best attempts at blocking it. “... sulfur maybe?” 

Something snapped behind him. It was the first sound he’d heard since he’d woken in this strange world. He turned. 

The fog of sulfur multiplied a hundredfold, stinging his eyes. A silhouette that scraped the ceiling wavered through his tears. In the time it took him to raise his hand to his face, the shadow expanded to dominate his vision. He caught the briefest impression of fangs and horns before a line of heat cut through his gut. He staggered backward- that was not heat. It was pain, so sharp and sudden that it felt like fire. 

Flat tried to speak, but the pain clogged his throat. Something hot and wet hit his shoes, sizzling through the leather. He hardly had a moment to struggle before the line in his gut twisted and everything went dark. 

\--

“Flat has died.” In a room far more put together than the one Flat had been in, a young woman spoke, her green eyes separating from the screen. 

“At least he managed to reach the store this time. Gray, eject him.” An older man said, his hair extremely long and the wrinkles on his brow excessively deep. It was as if he had been frowning for as long as he had been alive. 

“Understood.” Gray’s fingers tapped on the touch screen. Once finished, she turned back to the long-haired man, and he nodded back in response. 

“Escardos. That’s your third death so far.” The man announced, though not to the room or the other people around him, all hovering around their own computer station. 

No, he was speaking to the intercom, which was connected to a room different to the one he was in. At first, he received no response, but he was aware that this was how it always was with  _ that _ person.

After some seconds, however, a voice could be heard, its tone neutral, to the point of it sounding flat. “I’m aware of this, Professor.” Though it was impossible that they could hear the way that he clicked his tongue in irritation, a dull laugh followed. “That’s right. I guess I should call you Waver… or Mister Velvet? Which do you prefer?” 

Waver’s lips curled in disgust and something else. He shook it off his face and leaned in to the mic. “It doesn’t matter. Can you do it?” 

“I don’t know.” Escardos’s reply was immediate but not discouraged. “But I’m not going to stop until I get this one.” 

Waver brushed his hair back from his face and glanced around the room. They’d been going for nearly three hours. While it was not terribly long for a dive, Flat’s deaths in this Well were more drawn-out than others. While Escardos did not sustain any physical injuries, he could remember everything that transpired in the Well, and it had to be wearing on him. 

“Fine. Take fifteen while we review your footage. We’ll put you back in once you’ve recovered.” 

“No.” 

“No?”

“Put me back in.” 

Gray looked to Waver, fingertips hovering over her keyboard. Her mouth was open, like she wanted to speak but didn’t have the words. Waver looked down at the monitor with the cockpit. Escardos stared up at him with fever-bright eyes. 

“You need a break.” 

“What I  _ need _ is to  _ go back in. _ ” 

It was not the ‘five more minutes!’ Escardos had given Waver back before everything went to shit, but it was the closest he’d heard in nearly two years. He hated how that thought got to him. 

“Fine. Gray, inject Flat.” 

“Sir?” 

It was not like her to question him unless she was worried. He nodded his reassurance. 

“...Understood. Injecting Flat.” 

\--

He opened his eyes. 

The world hung still, like a Lego city paused mid-dropl. He shifted his feet against the asphalt and hummed. The sky was dark, but the city glowed enough to see. He did not know where he was, how he’d gotten there, or even his name, but none of that mattered. Fractured as the world was, there was a kind of beauty to it. The streets were caked with dirt, and the buildings were stained by constant smog, but it felt like walking through a fairytale. 

He took stock. 

There were not many places that he could go. The street was cut off, and there was a void below. There were several buildings around, but most were boarded up. Only one looked promising. It had enormous glass windows and stretched up, up, up, into the sky… if it was a sky. 

There was fog. 

It hung close to the upper floors as if someone had painted a cloud over the surface. 

“Huh. That’s weird! I don’t see fog anywhere else around…” He leaned until he tottered, taking in every silhouette in sight. “Oh! There’s one over there!” at the top of a sculpture in a chunk of park suspended another fifty feet from his street. “And another!” obscuring a city square perpendicular to the department store. “Four, five, six… Huh! All of the pieces have one! I wonder what that’s about! I bet I could find out if I could just get up there…” He tugged on the doors of the department store, but they hardly moved. Locked, just like the rest of the block. He was not sure why he was surprised. 

Fortunately, there was an alley on the far side of the wall. He glanced up again. The fog swirled lazily above, hiding the upper floors. He could hardly help his smile. “Okay! Wait right there, fog! I’m coming up!” 

Just as he’d hoped, the alley offered an open window he could climb through. It was hardly large enough to squeeze through, and it was high off the ground, but it was a start. He cupped his hand under his chin and examined the dumpster wedged under it. He could climb up it, but it looked a little dangerous to try to heft himself up in one go. As far as he could tell from outside, there weren’t any lights in the building, so the elevators and escalators were probably a no-go. He had a long climb to get to the top, and a sprained ankle would only make it longer. He’d have to find something to use as a step stool. 

That was when he caught sight of the feet peeking out from the other side of the dumpster. They were bare, and small enough for a child. He darted around the corner, smile plastered on his lips. “Whoa! So there are other people here! Are you okay? Your feet are gonna-” 

Saki. 

Her name was Saki, and his name was Flat. “...And I’m the brilliant detective. So that means it’s my job to solve your murder!” Saki did not respond. The intestines in her lap became a little cooler in the stagnant air. 

A cursory examination did not reveal many clues. She had no face, but by all appearances, she’d always been that way. Her feet were bare and scraped from walking on the uneven gravel of the alley. Something, probably a knife, had been used to cut open her body, but the stains on her dress suggested someone or some _ thing _ had gotten their hands dirty, arranging her entrails in a bouquet on her lap. 

“They’re probably not too far,” Flat reasoned. “‘Cause it doesn’t look like rigor mortis has set in or anything. But I didn’t see or hear anyone around so…” He looked up. The fog, like everything else, seemed to glow in the starlit night. He did not know what it meant, but his gut told him that he should keep going. 

“Sorry, Saki. Looks like I’m gonna have to go for a bit. Just wait here, okay?” 

There was a wooden crate a little further down the alley. It was probably from one shipment or another. Flat dragged it to the dumpster, huffing and puffing the entire way. Once he’d managed to climb up, he took a moment to examine the windowsill. There was a heavy layer of grime in the corners, but the center was wiped down to the concrete as if someone had crawled through very recently. There were also gouges cut deep into the plastic of the lid, though he could not tell if they were new or old. 

“So I guess the person that did this to you came through here? There’s no blood, so I guess they didn’t go back that way. Maybe they’re still outside somewhere? Hmm… I guess I could wait around and see if they come back, or…” There was something about that fog that called to him. “Or I could keep going! I mean, I’ve gotta collect evidence if I wanna be sure I’m right!” He hooked his hands under the window and yanked it open. It took several attempts to get it wide enough to slip through, and even then, he pushed it open a little wider. He wanted to avoid disturbing the evidence as much as possible, and that meant touching the sill as little as he could. 

The room inside was a treasury of knives. Each set was displayed under its own spotlight, with a tag encased in acrylic announcing its name and price. Flat moved to the nearest one and leaned in close. “Pancreas. August… 5th? 2017. A set of seven costs… thirty dollars?” He cocked his head. “Okay, what about this one? Gallbladder? Who’s naming these things? Uh… March 23rd, 2019. And it costs…” Flat blanched. “Who’s gonna pay that much for a buncha knives?” 

The other price tags surrounding him prompted similar questions. “It really is like a horror movie, except the lights are still on,” he observed. The words struck him as odd as soon as they left his mouth. “... But the lights weren’t on when I was out there, right? Maybe they’ve got motion sensors and they turned on when I came in? So I guess the bad guy probably isn’t in here? So I can probably walk around however I want. … And the elevators are probably running too!” He looked out over the sea of knives. There was a pillar in the center of the basement that looked suspiciously like it contained an elevator. He grinned. 

The ride up was slow and halting, and he could not tell how high he was. The numbers on the display glitched from the teens to the forties and back with no regard for sequence. He leaned against the wall and hummed as it went. He doubted that the numbers were useful anyway: there were only two buttons- one indicating the basement, and one indicating the roof. 

There was no view, no music, not even company to pass the time, so Flat created his own. The only things he knew were his name and his role, but he held a tune through hums to keep himself occupied. 

The end of a half-remembered verse coincided with the thump of a cable reaching its end. The display pinged, and the doors slid open. 

Flat peeked out. 

He had no memories of his life until he’d awoken in the city, but he knew that this was not a typical roof. Most were probably fairly empty for safety reasons, with the occasional air conditioning unit or water tank. The flooring here was not concrete or gravel- rather it was close-fit stone stained with something he could not identify. The fog was present, but not as thick as it looked from the ground. It was more a mist, diluting the black of the sky to a strange shade of grey. Diluting the people. 

“Woah!” Flat jumped back, and the elevator doors tapped his shoulders before scrolling back open. A woman tucked up against the rim of the roof jerked her head around to look at him… Or maybe not. It was difficult to tell when she had no eyes, nose, or mouth to speak of. She raised a finger to her lips and gestured for him to come closer. 

She was obviously scared of something. Flat looked left to right, up and down, but all he saw was cobblestone and cowering figures. He hunched down and crept to her side. 

Settled up against the wall, he took advantage of his new position to take another look around the roof. The only irregularity was the tower that contained the elevator. It was anachronistic, squat and obviously built by hand. The elevator doors were topped by an enormous clock face. It too was in ill-repair. There was a crack in the back, and the hands twitched and writhed, but never departed from their positions. The hour hand danced around the three, and the minute shivered just before the eight. 

The time had no meaning to him. For all he knew, it  _ could  _ be right, but he had no idea if it was night or day. Fingers tugged at his sleeve. The woman next to him was shaking, clinging to his arm for comfort. He gently tugged her hand from his shirt and wriggled around to face her. “What’s going on? Why’s everyone so scared?” 

“There’s a demon.” The blank expanse of her face did not move, but her voice was perfectly clear. “If… If we move around too much, or make too much noise…” The implication was clear without saying. Flat had seen Saki and, after a little more examination, could see bloodstains on the stone. She was not the only one who’d died here. 

“So everyone’s been quiet all this time?” That did not seem likely. It was difficult to be quiet on cobblestone, and he could hear sobbing in the distance. He’d been making plenty of noise before, both in the street and the alley, but he had not seen hide nor hair of the beast even once. It occurred to him briefly that the demon was confined to the supernatural fog, but that did not make sense. Saki was in the alley, thirty floors away from the nearest shred of it, but she’d been gutted all the same. 

So the demon had been up here, then gone down the elevator, out the window, and into the alley to kill her. There was no path to the roof other than the one Flat had taken without scaling the side of the building, so it was not on the roof now. 

Why had it left the roof when there were so many people up here, and no one but Saki in the streets below? 

Silence didn’t seem like the answer, or he’d be long-dead. So what else? What made the demon ignore all the survivors here, and leave the building to kill Saki? 

Flat moved to his feet and stepped forward. The woman’s fingertips brushed the leg of his pants, perhaps to hold him back, but he kept going and she slipped away easily. There was a non-trivial number of corpses scattered across the roof. The first was slumped in the center of the roof, wreathed by his intestines, with his heart laid out in his palm. The second was propped up against an industrial air conditioning unit, a mass of flesh that was probably her liver balanced on the folds of her shirt. There was a third, a fourth, a fifth… all the way through nine. 

“And with Saki, that makes ten,” Flat hummed. He brushed the hair away from the last victim’s face, only to find they had none, just like everyone else he’d seen in this strange world. That was their only obvious similarity. They cut across every demographic from age, to gender to race. He thought he’d caught a pattern when he’d caught that four of the corpses were about equally warm, but the five furthest from the elevator were all well into rigor mortis. 

Five that matched, and four that… “No, another five,” Flat realized, looking back to the elevator. “Saki was still a little warm too. I guess the demon’s killing five at a time? And since it takes a lotta hours for the limbs to go into rigor mortis, I guess it takes at least a few hours between sets?” But if that was the case, why did it leave the roof to kill Saki? There were at least another twenty people hiding in the mist. It could have easily finished its set with one of them, unless it was working on some other rule he’d yet to uncover. 

“Hmm… Now what? It doesn’t seem like it matters how it’s killing them, but I guess how it leaves them behind is a little weird.” He crouched down next to the nearest body. Its lungs were hooked around the back of its neck, held there by the pole it was propped against. “The organs that’re supposed to be necessary for life are… the heart, lungs, brain, liver, and kidneys. There are five in each group, and each person’s had one of those five ripped out. It’s kinda like it really wants to make sure they’re dead.” It was a strange habit. The demon already ripped enormous holes in their stomachs. Without medical treatment (and there was no sign of it), they could not possibly survive. 

Flat’s eyes trailed down the corpse’s wound, following the trail of blood down their shirt to their pants, to… 

More blood, this time on the knee. It did not come from the stomach wound, but the injury was just as fresh. The skin was pitted and stuck with grit, as if the person had fallen. There was no sign of scabbing. It could not have been long before their death. 

There’d been scrapes on Saki’s feet too, hadn’t there?

Without bothering to stand, Flat scrambled over to the next corpse. She was curled tight around her kidneys. Her arms, legs, and face were clear of gore but the back of her feet was another matter. “Ouch! That looks like it hurts! She should’ve worn socks. Can you wear socks with heels, or is that like socks with sandals?” That was three now- three fresh injuries on three corpses. He moved to the next one. Four corpses. Five corpses. On to the next set. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. 

Every victim had some sort of scrape, blister, or bruise. 

He jogged to the cowering woman he’d spoken to earlier, boots slapping against the cobblestone. “Hey! Are you hurt anywhere?” 

Her posture said that she feared she would be soon. She shook her head ‘no.’ 

Flat grinned and ran to the next person, and the next. Many would not speak to him, too wrapped up in their terror. They had no visible injuries, so he did not bother them further. 

There were only three left to examine when the tell-tale ding of the elevator signalled a new arrival. The child in front of him went stiff and curled into his father. Flat turned around. 

Given the normal laws of physics, the thing stepping out of the elevator should not have been able to step into it in the first place. It was nearly ten feet tall, and its shoulders were broader than the doors were wide. 

Flat could see why they called it a demon. 

The horns were the first clue- Its brow extended into four vicious points on either side, grey skin turning to steel without hesitation. Its fangs crowded out its lips and nose, bulging from its face like vicious tumors and stained red-brown. Its claws were covered in more of the stuff. ‘The murder weapons,’ Flat thought. 

He braced his feet and watched. While he was confident in his deductions, there was no guarantee the demon would continue following the same patterns it had already established. The caution was unwarranted. It raised its head and sniffed the air, the slits of its nose hidden behind its thicket of fangs. Then it turned its milk-white eyes on the rooftop. It was not blind. Its gaze paused on each and every survivor, including Flat himself. But even though it acknowledged them, it did not move to attack. 

With large, lumbering steps that set every cord of every muscle in sharp relief, it settled beside the clocktower, and tucked its knees to its chest. 

It went still.

The clock made its first progress. 

It was not an advance: The second hand ticked backwards, like a gauge marking off pressure. The minute hand followed behind at a fraction of the speed.

Flat shifted on his toes. 

“Um- Mr. Demon?” 

No response. 

“Ms. Demon?” 

Nothing. He ran his fingertip under his chin while he considered the options. “Mx. Demon?” 

The demon snorted. Steam that stunk like sulfur rose from its mouth, and Flat could hear the whimpers of people trying desperately to be quiet, but it did not move. 

The clock’s minute hand was trudging back from two at a steady pace, constantly lapped by the second hand’s rapid revolutions. Flat stepped closer. Twenty feet. Ten. Five. He could almost reach out and touch them. They made no move to attack, though their face tracked his movement. 

“Are you the one that killed Saki?” 

The demon grunted. It sounded just this side of too human for its face, and Flat laughed in surprise. It was not the response he was expecting, and his response seemed to surprise the demon just as much. They cocked their head and sniffed the air, looking for all the world like a dog that caught a scent. 

The clock above rolled past one, on its way to midnight. 

“Is that just what demons do?” 

They leaned forward and their fangs brushed his fingertips as he held them up to create a barrier. The sound of their snuffling drowned out the survivors’ sobs. 

“I mean, you’re covered in blood, and they all say you did it. Plus you’re the only one here with a face- kinda like they’re all background characters and you’re the only one that matters. But why are you killing them?” 

_ Twenty seconds _ .

“If that was just what you did, you wouldn’t be waiting here, right? I mean, I get only attacking people who’re injured. It’s like a shark smelling blood in the water or something. But it’s not like you’re eating them, so I guess that’s not it. Even if it’d explain why you take breaks sometimes.” 

_ Ten seconds. _

“Unless maybe it’s like a reflex?” 

No matter what he said, he got nothing resembling a reaction from the demon. They had settled so far into their stillness that he could have mistaken them for a statue had he not seen them leave the elevator. 

_ Five seconds.  _

“I guess you could also be done killing, but that’s probably a lot to hope for, huh.” 

_ Three. _

“Or maybe you’re sleeping?”

_ Two. _

“Can you sleep later? I wanted to talk.” 

_ One. _

A deep growl cut in, drowning out his thoughts as his words. The noise did not come from between the demon’s teeth, but out through the gaps of their bunched legs and down down down at its stomach. Their jaw flexed, and their incisors scraped against one-another, producing a terrible cacophony equivalent to a thousand knives scraping across a hundred plates.

Flat traced his tongue across his teeth to smooth over the itch. 

He knew that if he looked up, the clock’s hands would meet at midnight, and he knew that he’d been mistaken. The tower face had all the trappings of a clock, but not its purpose: Clocks measured time up, but this one counted down. He could not recall any particular instance of interacting with tire gages, but they sprung to memory. “You  _ are _ hungry,” he exclaimed. 

The demon huffed at the air and whined _.  _

Everyone on the rooftop had been cowering in place for hours, and completely free of fresh wounds. Flat himself had managed to avoid even minor scrapes. If his hypothesis was correct, there was no one on the roof that they could feed on. If they had fled the roof in search of others and returned here, their search was probably fruitless. Now they were hunched and shaking to the rhythm of their rolling stomach, drool slopping down their chin in desperation. 

“You’re hungry, but I can’t let you have any of these people here. After all, they’re just sad background characters that will never fill your stomach.” 

\--

Outside of the Well, it was organized chaos.

“The time that was on the clock tower coincides with the murder of his first victim!” said one person.

Immediately, another voice spoke up. “Dates on the knives coincide with the dates of the Ripper murders!”

Followed by a third. “We don’t have visual confirmation of the faces, but the wounds on the ten victims we have found all correspond with Ripper’s victims! Sending names now—!”

But none of that seemed to be good enough for Waver, who watched both his team and the scene playing out in the Well. “All eyes except Gray will focus on finding as much information as possible on our killer. This will likely be our only chance to catch them.” But one question would not escape his mind as he continued to watch— _ Just what is Flat doing!? _

\--

“It must be sad to be so hungry that you have to kill human beings to live.” Flat continuesdin a chipper tone, unafraid of the demon in front of him. “I’d ask if maybe it’d be better for you to buy groceries, but all I could see down there were butcher shops. And maybe it’d be the same as asking a wolf to buy produce instead of hunting.” 

He paused again, cupping his hand with his chin as he observed the demon that eyed him warily. “But you’re not hunting to eat. Unless you don’t eat like animals do. Maybe you feed on the fear that your victims have as they die, the same way a plant needs the sun to create its own nutrients.” With that said, he began walking away, creating some distance between himself and the creature. 

The demon staggered to their feet, and raised their face to the sky. The chunks of city that hung suspended around them were hardly visible through the fog, but they reached up, waving their claws at something they could see but could not reach. 

“So you’re stuck here? You can’t go to the other parts?” 

They whined. 

“Are there other demons like you out there? One for each chunk?” 

It was clear to anyone that the demon could not understand Flat. They held themself on their toes until their legs began to tremble, and they fell back on their haunches. They tucked their knees back to their chest, whimpering. Large as they were, they seemed so small like this, balled up and trembling. 

Flat folded his legs beneath him, keeping a respectable distance between them. “Well, I solved Saki’s murder, so I guess I’m done here.” The soft sounds of sobs in the background had turned to hushed whispers. Maybe something would happen soon. There were no police, but the remaining people were liable to try to do something about this demon if they wanted to survive. They might get hurt in the process- might become food themselves, and then the demon could live a little longer, but he would run out of food eventually. No matter how many people were holed away in this city, there would never be enough to feed the demon for long. 

“And I’ll be on the menu eventually as well,” he thought aloud. “That, or I’ve just gotta sit here and do nothing until I get all old and wrinkly. I don’t really remember how I got here, but I’m pretty sure I can’t get out on my own.” 

The demon burrowed their face into their knees, and Flat caught the scent of blood from where their fangs caught their skin. Their shoulders shook, bumping up and down.

“Hey!” 

The demon jumped. They sniffed at the air without hope, found nothing, and dropped their head again, but it was enough for Flat to confirm that there was not enough fresh blood on their face to confirm his fears. He relaxed back against the cobblestone and looked out into the fog. “Whoever put me here’s not ready to let me leave, huh? I don’t really like waiting. What do you think I should do?” 

He lifted his wrist to eye-level and looked it over. At some point after dressing (who knows when he’d done that), he’d rolled his sleeves up to his elbows, leaving it bare. He could wear the trench coat draped about his shoulders, but it was not nearly cold enough to justify it. “Hey- I think I figured it out! Wait for just one second.” There were diamond-shaped buttons on either side of the waist belt. The edges were sharp enough that they snagged on the fabric as he pulled them around. He tapped the point against his fingertip. Yup. Sharp. 

“Okay, Demon. I’m counting on you!” The button was no knife, but it was enough to draw blood. Flat felt more than heard the huff of the demon’s breath. He looked up just in time to catch the impression of teeth before it all went dark. 

\--

“What the hell did you  _ do?” _

Escardos pressed their fingers into their ears and tilted their head into their shoulder. Their head ached, though they were not injured. Waver’s voice stung, traveling along pathways cut raw by the phantom sensation of death. “Flat decided that he solved the case. He wanted to leave. I’m not exactly capable of stopping him.” 

Waver’s curses rang through their headache. It hurt. 

“Now we have to inject you  _ again! _ ” 

“Mr. Velvet!” 

“What?” 

The audio feet cut out, leaving Escardos sitting alone in their cockpit. They dropped their head between their knees and held their breath. They were not sure how much time they had before Waver sent them back in. They needed the rest. 

\--

“What is it, Caules?” 

Caules Forvedge was a newer addition to the team. He was only just out of the academy, and still new to Wellside and Kura. Given his relative inexperience, Waver had assigned him to facial recognition. It was a largely electronic process using pre-existing software. HIs job was making connections between database hits and the case, and shouting them out. Caules swept his fingertips across his display and sent an image to the other members of the team. “I have a hit on the woman that Flat spoke to on the roof. She has a distinctive birthmark on her neck. I’m sending you the data now.” 

Waver pulled up the image. It was fortunate that she had the birthmark- the faceless people in the Well aside, she had no particularly distinguishing features. 

“She is in her late fifties. She works as a nurse at a local family medicine clinic. She has one child. No word on who the father is. He must have left the picture a long time before her kid was born.” 

“A, um,” Gray’s face twisted into a pout. “A nurse would explain their medical knowledge.” 

Waver hummed. It made sense. The Ripper was called as much because they ripped the organs out of their victims, but they were not careless. Their precision was that of a trained professional. Rather than making multiple cuts like a typical killer, they made one clean incision in exactly the right spot. “Sigma. Look up her records. See if she has any obvious alibis.” 

“I have.” Sigma’s eyes flicked from Gray to Waver. “She was on shift every night. I can ask her employers but…” 

“...I doubt it’s worth it,” Waver finished. He gnawed at his fingernail. 

Gray leaned back from her screen fingertips playing over the hem of her coat. “Maybe it’s a coincidence…?” 

“That seems unlikely. While it’s not unusual for relative strangers to show up in a killer’s Well, I can’t imagine they’re complete strangers. She may have been their nurse, or an instructor, or maybe,” he paused. “Sigma. What did you say about her shifts?” 

“That she always had one when there was a murder.” 

“... Her child still lives with her. Gray.” 

“Yes?” 

“Contact Svin. Tell him to detain her child for questioning. Make sure he brings his Mizuhanome along. If we pick up the same cognition particles, we can confirm that they are the Ripper.” 

“Yes!” 

Waver turned his attention back to the camera feed. Escardos stared back at him, slumped back in their chair. They were not smiling, but he thought they looked pleased. “So Professor,” they mouthed, “How’d I do?” 

He slammed the connection shut. 


End file.
